Episodes
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A year ago, Astead took “The Run-Up” listeners home for Thanksgiving.
Specifically, he convened a focus group of family and friends to talk about the election and the question of Black people’s changing relationship to the Democratic Party.
This year, he got the group back together for a different mission.
The question was: What happened? What can Democrats learn from their defeat in 2024?
On today’s show: an autopsy conducted not by consultants or elected officials but by committed, everyday Democratic voters. And a farewell.
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President-elect Trump’s cabinet nominees and major appointments — which have arrived quickly in the days since he won the election — are more than just a list of allies. The roster is a window into how he sees the mission of a second term.
One priority will be immigration and border control, and, more specifically, Trump’s campaign promise of “mass deportations.”
On Sunday night, Trump announced the person he was putting in charge of this effort: Tom Homan.
Homan was the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first Trump administration, and he played a key role in the family separation policy.
Back in March 2023, we went to see Homan speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC. After his panel, we sat down to discuss his views on the border and how he and Trump might institute their preferred policies, like mass deportation, if given the chance.
Which of course, they now have been.
On today’s show, that candid interview from 2023 with Tom Homan, and a possible glimpse at our immigration future.
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For more than two years, we’ve been asking pretty much everyone we meet a version of the same question:
Who are you going to vote for and why?
And on Wednesday morning, we had the answer to that question. Or at least the first part.
Donald Trump easily won the electoral vote, and as of early Thursday, he’s on track to win the popular vote too.
The second part of the question — the why of 2024 — is a little more complicated. It will take time to answer in its entirety.
But we wanted to start small, by talking with one Michigan voter. She came to mind on election night, when it became clear that it was going to be a Trump victory and that the sweep of his support was telling a new story about this country.
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For months now, “The Run-Up” has been traveling around the country talking with people, trying to ensure that when today came, whatever happened wouldn’t feel like a surprise.
So as people go to the polls to cast their vote for Kamala Harris, Donald Trump or someone else, we wanted to return to the place where we started almost exactly a year ago.
Clallam County, in the northwest corner of Washington State.
It’s the last true bellwether county in America. Voters there have correctly picked the president every year since 1980.
Last year, what we found in Clallam really did match the mood of the country.
Democrats were worried about Joe Biden’s age. Some Republicans were hoping they might have an option other than Donald Trump. And overall, people expressed frustration with their options and both political parties.
On Election Day, we return to Clallam to hear what’s on the minds of these voters — people whose feelings and decisions could reflect how the country votes.
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One phenomenon that’s been getting a lot of attention during this election is the growing gender gap among young people.
Young men are leaning right, and young women are moving left.
In recent national surveys from The New York Times and Siena College, young women favored Kamala Harris by 42 percentage points and young men favored Donald Trump by 12 points.
And Trump has made explicit appeals to men — or at least his version of masculinity — a huge part of his message and campaign strategy.
So, as we enter the election’s final days, we wanted to see how these messages were landing in the key battleground state of Wisconsin.
On the show today: What’s driving the gender divide in 2024? And is Trump’s bet on young men working?
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For most of this year, we’ve been focused on the race for president, the messages coming from both parties’ nominees and their reception among voters.
But that’s not all that’s on the ballot this November, and so much of what any president can do in the White House depends on who’s in Congress.
So before Election Day, we wanted to take a look at the down-ballot landscape of 2024.
Who will control the House and the Senate? And what can we learn about both parties when we turn away from the top of the ticket?
On today’s episode:
Amy Walter, publisher and editor in chief of The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.
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There’s no state more likely to tip the election than Pennsylvania.
It has the most electoral votes of any swing state, with 19, and its flip from red to blue in 2020 helped secure the win for Joe Biden.
For Kamala Harris to prevail there this year, she needs to win over moderates, even Republicans, who are turned off by Donald Trump. And she has to drive up enthusiasm among the Democratic base, including Black voters in urban centers like Philadelphia.
On the show today, the Democrats’ final push in Pennsylvania — and a conversation with Al Schmidt, the state’s top election official, on how he’s preparing for close results in this closely watched state.
Featured in the episode:
Canvassers with the Working Families Party
Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s secretary of state
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Here’s what makes North Carolina, with its 16 Electoral College votes, unique among the electoral battlegrounds this year.
Come election night, it will be one of the first of the closely fought states where the polls will close, giving the campaigns, and the public, early clues on where the night is headed.
The state is probably the best opportunity for Democrats to win a state this year that they didn’t win in 2020, and the party — along with the state’s Democratic governor — is optimistic that demographic shifts in the state might favor Kamala Harris.
North Carolina is still reeling from Hurricane Helene, which hit late last month, caused an estimated $53 billion in damages and upended early voting plans in the western — and heavily Republican-leaning — part of the state. It also led to a flood of misinformation about the governor, Roy Cooper, and the federal disaster response.
On today’s show, how Hurricane Helene and the misinformation that followed have reshaped the election landscape in this crucial battleground state — and changed the closing messages from both parties.
On today’s episode:
Gov. Roy Cooper, Democrat of North Carolina
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On Tuesday night, with three weeks to go until Election Day, Donald Trump was in Georgia.
In 2020, he lost the state by around 12,000 votes, and Georgia became central to his claims that the election had been stolen. After his defeat, he went after Republican state officials and voting machines.
At his rally on Tuesday, he was doing something different. He was encouraging people to vote early, to participate in a system his party had previously questioned.
The plan was to make the results “too big to rig” — just one part of the Republican strategy to make sure last time doesn’t repeat itself.
On today’s show, we take a closer look at the Trump ground game in Georgia and explore why Georgia Republicans are confident that 2024 won’t be like 2020.
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We are less than a month from Election Day.
That means our polling colleagues are busy. And that they are well positioned to help answer some of the biggest questions we have at this stage in the race.
Like: Who has the advantage between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump?
What’s the most important battleground state?
And what are the chances we actually know the final result on election night?
On today’s show, we do our best to get answers — and to get ready for these next few weeks.
Featured on today’s episode:
Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst for The New York Times.
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Tim Walz, a former high school football coach from a tiny town, has folksy sayings and a camo cap. JD Vance shot to fame with “Hillbilly Elegy,” aiming to speak for parts of rural America that felt left behind.
Both parties — especially with their vice-presidential candidates — are trying to convey to rural Americans that they are not forgotten.
This comes after Democrats have seen significant erosion of support in rural areas.
How have Republicans grown their rural advantage to historic levels? Can Democrats do enough to remain competitive in 2024 — especially in places like Mr. Walz’s former congressional district?
In the wake of the vice-presidential debate, The Run-Up looks at how both parties are trying to reach rural voters — with their vice-presidential candidates and their messages.
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At one point, he supported the presidential aspirations of Donald Trump, a fellow reality TV star and businessman.
But now Mark Cuban — perhaps best known for his longtime ownership of the Dallas Mavericks and his perch as a “Shark Tank” shark — has taken on a surprising new role.
He is a prolific and vocal supporter of Kamala Harris. Especially when it comes to his view of what a Harris administration would mean for the economy.
So, today on The Run-Up, as we enter the homestretch toward Election Day, as Tim Walz and JD Vance are set to face off in what could be the final debate before people head to the polls, a conversation with Kamala Harris’s most surprising surrogate.
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This year, Democrats and Republicans are both fighting to convince voters that their party alone can fix what both parties say is a big problem: the Southern border.
And public sentiment on the issue is shifting. According to Gallup, 55 percent of Americans want to curb immigration, the highest recorded total since 2001.
With that in mind, we wanted to talk with people who actually live and work near the border. So we traveled to El Paso, with Jazmine Ulloa, a Times politics reporter who grew up there.
On this week’s show, a conversation on the border about the border, and what people there make of the shifting politics in the battle over their backyard.
On today’s episode:
Jazmine Ulloa, a national politics reporter for The New York Times
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There’s a message that Kamala Harris and the Democrats are trying to send in these final weeks: The Democrats are patriots too.
It was all over the place at the Democratic National Convention, in the chants of “U.S.A.!” that broke out on the convention floor, in the vice president’s speech and in a speech by Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland.
This effort to reclaim patriotism can be seen as a way to reclaim more white rural voters. But it’s also an appeal to disaffected voters, especially some Black voters, who have lost faith in the system altogether.
In this week’s “Run-Up,” how the Democrats are using love of country to try to reach the skeptics — the people torn on whether to vote at all.
On today’s episode:
Wes Moore, governor of Maryland
Prentiss Haney, community organizer
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For the people still on the fence about 2024, Tuesday night’s debate was an important data point.
How would Vice President Kamala Harris differentiate herself from President Biden? How would former President Donald Trump come across when facing a new opponent? Would this matchup, the first time these candidates met, be enough to help these undecided voters make a decision?
On today’s “Run-Up,” we look at how they are thinking after the debate. Up first, we watch the debate with Corrie Zech, an undecided voter in Ohio.
We initially met her back in June at a watch party for the first presidential debate. Listen to that episode here.
Then we catch up with undecided voters we first talked to for this episode, ahead of the debate.
Everyone tuned in Tuesday night. They said they’re closer to making a decision but, with less than two months to go, have yet to fully make up their minds.
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Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will face off in Philadelphia on Tuesday night for the second presidential debate of 2024. It will be the first time the two candidates meet on a debate stage.
They enter the debate in a neck-and-neck race, with Mr. Trump leading Ms. Harris, 48 percent to 47 percent, according to the latest national polling from The New York Times and Siena College.
That means the people still on the fence — those unsure about whom to vote for or whether to vote at all — are potentially the most important audience for the debate.
Today, “The Run-Up” talks with Ruth Igielnik, a Times polling editor, about the 5 percent of voters who are still undecided. We then speak with four undecided voters to ask what they are hoping to hear tonight.
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Former president Trump frequently takes credit for helping to overturn Roe v. Wade.
But in recent weeks, he has posted on Truth Social, his social media site, that his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights.” He suggested that he might vote for a Florida ballot measure allowing abortion up to around 24 weeks, before reversing his position. And he floated the idea that under a Trump administration, in vitro fertilization treatments would be covered by insurance companies or the federal government.
With these shifting messages, Donald Trump is basically daring anti-abortion voters to turn on him. So will they?
On this week’s show, we check in with Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a leading voice for American evangelicals, to find out.
On today’s episode
Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. Listen to an earlier conversation with Dr. Mohler on “The Run-Up” here.
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This election, like a lot of elections before it, may come down to which candidate voters think might help them with their grocery bills and housing costs — the essential stuff of everyday economics.
That’s what people around the country say — and what they tell pollsters too.
But the fact that life feels expensive right now is not just something voters are talking about.
Campaigns are too.
Kamala Harris just released an ad focused on how hard it is to own a home in the United States and an economic policy aimed at curbing prices. And Donald Trump has been on the trail touting his economic record.
So, this week on “The Run-Up,” we spend time talking with people who feel the economy is not working for them — and talking to Jason DeParle, who covers poverty for The New York Times, about how the candidates say they’ll help the poorest Americans.
On today’s episode
Jason DeParle, who writes about poverty in the United States for The New York Times.
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On the final night of the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage and formally accepted her party’s nomination.
After the balloons fell, Astead Herndon and his colleagues Maya King and Jennifer Medina broke down the moments that stood out to them from the night — from people touched by gun violence telling their stories to the way Ms. Harris talked about Israel and the war in Gaza to how she told her own story. Plus, there was the rumored special guest who never materialized.
On today’s episode:
Maya King, a politics reporter for The New York Times
Jennifer Medina, a politics reporter for The New York Times
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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Democratic National Convention tonight, formalizing her rapid ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket and capping a very unusual path to the nomination.
No primary. No serious opposition. No real robust sense of what her legislative priorities might be.
On today’s show, a quest to answer this question: Is a Harris-led Democratic Party substantively different than the Democratic Party of Joe Biden?
As they all gathered in Chicago, we put that question to Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers union — and the man hosting Democrats in his town, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson.
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